


Shadow

by Susan



Category: Starsky & Hutch
Genre: M/M, Older Characters
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-05-19
Updated: 2013-05-19
Packaged: 2017-12-12 08:38:51
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 886
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/809572
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Susan/pseuds/Susan
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>"The doctor said it might be nothing. Told me to come back next week and they'll repeat the scan. She said sometimes a shadow is just a shadow." <i></i></i>
</p>
            </blockquote>





	Shadow

**Author's Note:**

  * For [KimberlyFDR](https://archiveofourown.org/users/KimberlyFDR/gifts).



When Starsky told him, he kept his voice light. 

"The doctor said it might be nothing. Told me to come back next week and they'll repeat the scan. She said sometimes a shadow is just a shadow." 

Hutch nodded and searched his face, looking for the truth- or perhaps the lie- hidden there. Like he did that time when Starsky had said he twisted his ankle, because it wasn't the right time to tell him it was broken, not with McPherson still waving his gun around and two flights of stairs between them and backup. It wasn't until McPherson was on the floor, hands cuffed, cursing them and their mothers and the whole fucking department, that Starsky had slid down the wall with a ragged "Hutch?" on his lips. 

There were no more McPhersons for them now, but Hutch remembered the fear, the cold weight pressing on his chest, the prickling at the back of his neck. 

"I probably just moved or took a breath when I shouldn't have.” Starsky said in bed later. “Blurred things." 

"Probably," Hutch said. It sounded like a prayer. Maybe it was. "You never did learn how to keep still." His hand opened and closed around Starsky's cock. "Like now," he laughed. "There you go moving again." 

And then his mouth was on Starsky's, and his hand was in his hair. They moved together with a rhythm they'd learned years before and it was still better than he'd ever imagined it could be. Even now, after all this time. 

He'd imagined it a lot in those first long months after the shooting. He'd told Starsky how he felt one rainy night in December, when it looked like they'd finally licked the pneumonia and maybe the shock of his confession wouldn't kill him after all. He'd sat beside him on the couch and stared at his hands and said the words he'd been rehearsing since the day they met. And even to him they’d sounded ridiculous and he'd waited to be sent packing even if it was his apartment. 

But Starsky had only smiled and said, "Of course you do" and pulled him close. He hadn't thought about that night, or even about Gunther in years. 

Now, he lay beside Starsky in the shadows, listening to the quiet sounds of his breathing and tried unsuccessfully not to brood about death and dying and all the funerals he’d attended. Vanessa, Gillian, Terry, his grandparents. Half a dozen cops whose names he barely remembered. Starsky’s mother last year. 

Mostly he remembered his father's funeral. He remembered shivering by the grave, his breath a frozen cloud as he mouthed the words to Amazing Grace. Starsky's hand resting on his arm, barely felt through layers of shirt and sweater and coat, but there. He remembered wishing he'd told his father about him and Starsky on that last visit, wishing he'd finally come out and said it. "I love him." Not for his blessing or for his understanding, but for the simple truth of who he was. But he hadn't.

"He's dying," he'd told Starsky. "What would be the point now?" But he knew it was cowardice, not compassion that had kept him silent. 

 

They rose early and walked on the beach every day that long week, the week between the first test and the second. Made love every night. Starsky joked that he might not live long enough to find out he was dying. 

The day of the test, Starsky held his breath, exactly as he was told. He kept on holding it until they saw the doctor the next afternoon. 

The doctor read the report and nodded. 

"You play poker, Doc?" Starsky asked.

She glanced up from the report and shook her head. "No. Why?"

"You should. I can't tell if I should write my will or plan next year's summer vacation."

She took off her glasses, rubbed the bridge of her nose between a thumb and forefinger, closed the file and pushed it to one side. "Well, everyone should have a will . . . but I think next summer's vacation is a pretty sure bet, and the one after that too. Sometimes a shadow is really just a shadow. Go home. You're fine." 

Hutch held his hand all the way home in the car. Didn't let go until he'd pulled Starsky into bed and then only because he needed his hand for something else. Needed both of them, in fact. 

"Nine lives, Starsky," he said breathlessly. "You're a lucky bastard, you know that?"

"Yep. I don't go down easy, remember?"

Later, as the shadows lengthened against the bedroom wall, Hutch said quietly, both hands tucked behind his head, "I should've told him. My father, I mean. About us."

Starsky pulled himself up on one elbow. "I understood why you didn’t. He could be very . . .” He searched for the word. “Unforgiving."

"Would you have?" Hutch asked, staring at the ceiling.

"Told your father? Not likely." 

Hutch smiled. "You know what I mean. Would you have told your father?"

"Yeah." 

"I'm glad."

Starsky leaned over him, tracing a line on Hutch's forehead with one finger. "You still think too much, you know that?"

"I know." He kissed Starsky long and slow, like they still had all the time in the world. And they did.

More than enough, anyway.

**Author's Note:**

> For Kimberly. Written when she needed to remember that sometimes a shadow is just a shadow.


End file.
